KEEP IT CLEAN!

A graphic history of sanitation, from indoor toilets in Scotland 8,000 years ago to the advent of chlorinated water in 1908.

Concluding with a massive bibliography but written and illustrated in the spirit of a middle school term paper, this latest in the Big Ideas series offers heaping piles of yuks and yucks. Narrator George E. Waring Jr.—a 19th-century engineer whose pioneering efforts resulted in cleaner streets in Memphis and New York City—discourses anecdotally on the world-changing development of public and private toilets, sewers, bathing, soap, and purified drinking water. Taking evident delight in depicting nauseated people, polluted waterways, and pipes pouring raw sewage into the latter in his big, loosely drawn panels, the author/illustrator describes sanitation practices of everyone from space travelers (“Is that a comet?” “Nope, flaming poop”) to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese. Though he does dispense nods to “fatbergs,” rubber duckies, and other random nuggets along the way, in general the informational load is light at best. For instance, he doesn’t mention many significant public health scientists (a reference to Dr. John Snow is relegated to the timeline), antiseptics, or even what the “certain rocks” or “special powder” used for water purification might be called. In a sudden change of tone at the end, Brown tacks on a concerned but perfunctory call to recognize that even today, two billion people lack access to clean water.

A superficial treatment of an undeniably big idea.